Most people
assume there are all sorts of master plans being pursued
throughout the US government. But, amazingly, we are still searching for
a vision to replace the decades-long containment strategy that America
pursued to counter the Soviet threat.
 Thomas Barnett1

Textbook
models for policy and strategy formulation argue that grand strategic success relies on
the effective development of a rational, consistent, meaningful, andto some
extentconsensus grand strategic design that enforces discipline and unity over the
discrete policy choices of American government.2 One can, for example, make a cogent argument that foundational Cold War efforts
like Kennans long telegram and his X article (Sources
of Soviet Conduct); NSC 20/4 (US Objectives with Respect to the USSR to
Counter Soviet Threats to US Security); NSC 68 (United States Objectives and
Programs for National Security); the Eisenhower Solarium Project; and, finally, NSC
162/2 (Basic National Security Policy) established just such a grand strategic
foundation; and further, that this foundation, with some subsequent and at times
substantial course correction and style adjustment, informed and guided strategic
decisionmakers for half a century.3

These foundational
Cold War initiatives chartered grand strategic choices for the nation that were
ends-focused, progressively ways- and means-rationalized and thus more readily
risk-informed. They enabled senior decisionmakers to see discrete policy choices within a
strategic context that was broader and often more consequential than that which defined
and bounded the most immediate challenges and crises of the day. In the end, it is safe to
say that they enabled successive executives to make effective and rational cost-benefit
calculations that enforced some consistency on policy decisions over time. By doing so,
they also underwrote an ordered defense of the nations long-term strategic
interests.

5/6

The post-Cold War
reality is unfortunately quite different. Over a half decade of blue-ribbon panels,
think-tank research, and expert commentary have made it quite clear that, since the end of
the Cold War, the nation has had no grand strategy.4 Nor, for that matter, does it have the capacity for meaningful net assessment
and planning.5 There is no risk-informed grand strategy
or consensus strategic vision guiding American great power or enforcing discipline over
the employment of those instruments of power so critical to securing American primacy most
effectively. There is no standing design chartering broad, integrated American political,
military, and economic action to secure the states position and influence in a
rational and deliberate way.6 Frankly, the exercise of American
influence is not, as many imagine and as Thomas Barnett quips about in the quotation at
the beginning of this article, the product of some deliberative, whole-of-government
process enforcing unity, order, and focus on the nations instruments of power.
Instead, American power is employed against discrete challenges in isolation as they arise
with neither detailed nor comprehensive, whole-of-government consideration of the broader
implications or risks associated with either action or inaction.7

Believing
otherwisebelieving, for example, that the nation is operating according to some
coordinated grand doctrine that has been both vetted by and socialized across the whole of
the American government implies that three key questions can be answered
satisfactorily. First, since the end of the Cold War, has the United States corporately
devoted the requisite intellectual and political energy necessary to truly understand its
own relative position in detail and the real obstacles, risks, and costs associated with
maintaining that position over time? Second, has the United States developed a consensus
grand design that employs all of the enormous potential embodied in its instruments of
power in order to secure its strategic position and influence effectively against direct
and indirect challenges to both?8
Finally, if one believes the previous two questions can be answered in the affirmative,
have the nations strategy elite identified and articulated the principal aspects

6/7

of the resultant
grand design and have they assessed and accounted for the real costs associated with
pursuing it in a meaningful way? Reasonable analysts will conclude that the answer to all
three questions is no.9

Opportunity
Lost?

When the Soviet
Union collapsed, the power dynamics of international politics changed for certain. Yet
American policy elites in and out of power never fully appreciated that this fundamental
and quite favorable sea change in the distribution of power still required some deliberate
and thoughtful consideration of the nations newly acquired, singular position of
dominant influence.10 These same elites also failed to undertake any serious
appraisal of the extraordinary demands associated with maintaining the nations
dominant position against an expanding sea of smaller but nonetheless uniquely capable and
complex strategic competitors and challenges. This newly recognized universe of challenges
ranged from the purely economic, political, and obstructionist to the irreconcilably
violent and dangerous. Today, this universe includes states, transnational movements,
sub-state spoilers, and even individuals. In the 2006 report Integrated Power: A
National Security Strategy for the 21st Century, Lawrence Korb and Robert Boorstin
agree, observing:

From the fall of the
Berlin Wall to the collapse of the Twin Towers to the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the
United States has lacked a national security strategy that properly reflects the reality
of a new era. This despite the fact that todays geopolitical situation is markedly
different from the Cold War era, when our country had a clear, coherent, and widely
supported plan that focused on containing and deterring Soviet Communist expansion. And
this despite the events of September 11, 2001, which reshaped the way Americans looked at
the world.11

Absent the Cold
Wars compulsion for political discipline on issues of grand strategya
discipline imposed by the threat of imminent nuclear confrontationthe strategic
environment within which the United States would in the future defend its political,
economic, and security advantages was at once abundantly more complex and unpredictable.
Yet then and now, in spite of 15 years of post-Cold War experience, much of this
complexity remained and remains unaccounted for in a deliberate and objective way. Despite
continuing post-Cold War, mainstream consensus on the need to maintain the nations
dominant position, there simply has never been any serious effort made to appreciate how
the nation might do so effectively, employing its broad instruments of power under such
radically different strategic circumstances.12 Many outside of Washington officialdom have recognized that employment of the
classical instruments of powerparticularly military powerin tradi-

7/8

tional combinations
and according to 20th-century rules would be at best less relevant to securing American
primacy in the 21st century. However, those exercising or destined to exercise decisive
influence over the strategic direction of the nation failed to recognize this
transformative event in sufficient detail, and thus opted instead for a form of business
as usual.

There was at the end
of the Cold War and is today a desperate need for strategic innovation and a new
commitment to reasoned grand strategy.13
Nuance, consensus-building, burden-sharing, strategic deliberation and patience, risk
management, policy discipline, humility, and, above all, temperance are necessities for
the effective defense of American position in the 21st century. However, all of these were
and remain in increasingly short supply, as American decisionmakers continue demonstrating
an almost messianic confidence in the strength, durability, vitality, and universal appeal
of American post-Cold War dominance.14

Chronic
overconfidence comes from post-Cold War triumphalism. Many, viewing the world through the
prism of 19th- and 20th-century great power, believed the United States emerged from the
Cold War unchallenged and unchallengeableeven bulletproofin grand strategic
terms. Thus, grand strategy died. In the minds of many, absent effective great-power
competition, there was no longer a need for grand strategy.15
Conventional wisdom held that the deliberate maintenance of position need not be so
deliberate if the United States could continue underwriting a secure status quo solely by
drawing on what many thought to be an unlimited and invulnerable supply of strategic
advantages. There simply was no need to evaluate relative position and plan deliberately
to maintain it, if that position was and would remain unassailable.

Today, strategic
decisionmaking is dominated more by regionalists and policy wonks than by grand
strategists.16 In this environment, national interests
are often conflated with the narrower interests of popular whim, individual executive
departments and their bureaucracies, even ambitious and convincing politicos jealously
pursuing discrete policy interests and exercising power disproportionate to their official
position. Under these circumstances, policy decisions that trigger either action or
inaction can, without some care, unknowingly expose the nation to enormous risk. For
example, absent the guiding hand of a consistent grand strategy and without some advanced
and thoroughgoing assessment of strategic risk and cost in context, it is simply
unknowable whether the most expedient and direct route to deposing a hostile regime is
not, at the same time, fundamentally disruptive to the reasoned defense of the
nations strategic position in the future. Likewise, though it may seem outwardly
intuitive, it is equally unclear whether or not new nuclear states are intolerable or
manageable. And, if they are the former,

8/9

whether the United States can do anything
about them without incurring some prohibitive grand strategic cost.

It is simply safe to
say that deliberative net assessment, strategy development, and strategic planning are not
employed as best practices for the exercise of American great power. There is,
to be sure, a surplus of unclassified statements of strategy that purport to govern the
nations approach to broad national security issues, national defense and military
affairs, homeland security, terrorism, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, cyber-security,
and so on. However, all rely heavily on form over substance and focus more on delivering
strategic communications themes than they do on establishing real, actionable, risk-tested
strategic or grand strategic priorities.17 In the end, therefore,
none satisfies, in whole or in part, the very real and growing need for a more fundamental
ends-focused, ways- and means-rationalized, and risk-informed
grand strategy governing the deliberate maintenance of American position and influence
into an indefinite strategic future. It is simply assumed as a matter of faith that
American primacy is in principle secure at its foundationno matter what the risk and
cost associated with maintaining it.

Primacy of the
Comfortable, Vulnerable, and Unaware

I propose an
alternative perspective that calls the assumption that closed the previous section into
serious question. This view accepts that the nations absolute power, in classically
realist terms, may be unassailable for the foreseeable future; in short, its material
capacity may in fact be somewhat secure from fundamental dislocation. However, its
relative position of power and influence may at the same time be increasingly vulnerable
to some conscious, internal repudiation of the high costs and risks associated with
maintaining American primacy. Thus, though the United States may have all the potential
power necessary to maintain its position, the will to employ that power most effectively
may be at increasing risk. The framers of NSC 68 feared the same in 1950 when they
observed:

We run . . . the
added risk of being confused and immobilized by our inability to weigh and choose, and
pursue a firm course based on a rational assessment of each. The risk that we may thereby
be prevented or too long delayed in taking all needful measures to maintain the integrity
and vitality of our system is great. The risk that our allies will lose their
determination is greater. And the risk that in this manner a descending spiral of too
little and too late, of doubt and recrimination, may present us with even narrower and
more desperate alternatives, is the greatest risk of all.18

The events of 9/11
changed only our perspective on the world, not our approach to it. The realities of
post-modern great power and primacy were sud-

9/10

denly at the
nations doorstep, seemingly unannounced and without the benefit of advanced
consideration of how to both protect our physical security while, at the same time,
securing and extending our long-term strategic position across Morgenthaus elements
of power. American great power relies on three key but vulnerable sources of strength for
its continued vitality: a homeland secure from fundamental dislocation or disruption,19 a strong and vibrant network of alliances and
partnerships founded on common interests and values,20 and a population and its opinion elites inured to the inherent costs of primacy.21 The
events of 9/11 and subsequent experience have made clear the inherent vulnerability of all
three.

From the end of the
Cold War to 9/11, there had been an obvious and natural erosion of common interest and
discipline in the nations traditional alliances and partnerships. Further, many had
begun warning that the political, economic, and physical security of the American homeland
itself was increasingly vulnerable to attack by sub-state and transnational actors less
constrained by the norms and conventions that govern international relations. Finally, all
Americans had grown comfortable with the benefits of primary influence, but had done so
with little appreciation for the substantial fiscal, material, human, psychological, and
political burdens that could be associated with its continued maintenance over time. Thus,
many were caught quite unaware by the steady accumulation of real cost that began suddenly
with the 9/11 attacks and that has continued unabated ever since.

With respect to the
latter source of strength in particulara population inured to the costs associated
with primacythere continues to be some genuine shock among average and elite
Americans alike that ubiquitous American influence breeds resistance and unease. This
dangerous naiveté ignores a central maxim of international politicsgreat power
engenders respect but it also foments fear, envy, and venom as well. Worse, it hazards a
persistent underappreciation of the accumulating costs associated with maintaining
American primacy in a world increasingly marked by open resistance to and mistrust of US
power and motivations. It is difficult for many Americans to reconcile in their own minds
the idea that the United States can be admired, revered, and relied on, while at the same
time actively resisted, balanced against, and hated as well.22
This cognitive dissonance can result in imprudent denial of political realism where some
in the American strategy elite are captured by unachievable, risk-untested political
rhetoric at the expense of real strategic calculation.

This unique and
difficult position makes for very turbulent and treacherous strategic waters which, to be
sure, are best navigated by design rather than chance. This is the inhospitable
environment that honest post-modern national security strategists must occupy and conquer.
It is an envi-

10/11

ronment that
requires far more Thomas Hobbes than many would like to admit. Successful defense of
American position and interests often requires suspension of ideal goals in favor of more
stable, often minimally favorable, but still acceptable alternatives.

Self-awareness and
early acknowledgment are often identified as essential first steps in overcoming
addiction. If this is true, then the United States and its strategists can break what
amounts to a dangerous dependency on idealism only by recognizing two very important
realties about the American position of dominant power and influence. First, no
oneexcept the most powerful considers dominant global power to be benign.
Thus, resistance and obstruction to the United States are natural and unavoidable
components of the post-Cold War, post-9/11 strategic environment.23 Further, current American dominance in traditional realms
of security competition will most assuredly guarantee that any active, violent resistance
to it will be, by definition, irregular and catastrophic in character. Indeed, it is clear
that the United States has likely entered a period of persistent irregular and potentially
catastrophic conflict that will present it with the most immediate and consequential
physical and psychological challenges to its position and influence.24
Thus, a national security structure that remains optimized to confront increasingly
lower-probability traditional threatseven under the guise of
transformationwill face fundamental challenges without some substantial structural
and cultural adjustment.

Second, great power
is neither exercised nor retained effectively without strict adherence to a long-term,
self-interested grand design that jealously protects the nations key sources of
strength but also employs power judiciously. This is not to suggest that the United States
should exercise power without some reference to its moral compass, core values, or
beliefs. However, it does imply that the nation should calculate its real, tangible
interests first and then identify those areas where its morals, values, beliefs, and
interests intersect most decisively in order to establish priorities for action.25

Failure to come to
terms physically, morally, or psychologically with either of these realities will only
bring political and grand strategic disappointment. Failure in the first instance, for
example, hazards naïve optimism about how the United States and its actions will be
perceived by others around the world. The United States ignores the history of great
powers at its peril. Failure with respect to the second will see the United States erode
its finite capacity, addressing the immediate and most visually evocative traditional
challenges at the expense of husbanding its capacity to contend decisively with what may
be its less obvious or less immediate but nonetheless more important and truly strategic
challenges.

Uninformed by a
grand design that takes the aforementioned to heart and then identifies where the nation
is headed, how it will proceed, what ob-

11/12

stacles it can
expect to encounter, and, finally, in what condition it would like to arrive at its
destination, American great power today appears only capable of attacking one big
challenge at a time. And even then ineffectively, given no rational whole-of-government
capacity for net assessment, strategy development, strategic planning, and risk
assessment. In the absence of grand design, the United States is left to employ its
enormous power reactively and sometimes haphazardly. As a result, US policy can, both in
perception and fact, be more short-sighted, less judicious, more arbitrary, and perhaps
more martial than it either should or has to be. The United States may enjoy immediate,
transient success as a result of some policy choices. However, at what cost to its
yet-undefined, enduring grand strategic interests and, indeed, at what price to those
around the world upon whom the United States depends for some assistance in protecting and
extending its primary influence?

Absent some
revolutionary change in the thinking of the most senior in the strategy development and
strategic decisionmaking arena, these circumstances will persist. And while the United
States enjoys unprecedented international influence and power now, it hazards precipitous
loss of both by its own errors of strategic omission and commission in the future.
Indeed, strategic actionundertaken without reference to some guiding vision or
consensus destination; without conscious, risk-informed choices; and without some
deliberate strategic plan for achieving minimum acceptable outcomescan serve to
undermine, vice underwrite, American great power in very short order.26 Thus, the high cost of primacy is rarely accounted for,
nor is it ever effectively communicated to the population and their opinion elites. As a
result, the United States may have all the potential power necessary to maintain its
position of influence, but the will to employ that power most effectively may at the same
time be at substantial risk. This may be true at the very time that many around the world
believe implicitly in the necessity of continued American primacy as a real bulwark
against disorder and insecurity.27

The Iraq War
in Context

We know the future
is unknowable. But you cant plan a great nations steps
based on everything, quote, being unknowable.
 US Senator Joseph Biden28

The war in Iraq in
microcosm has proven illustrative of the very real hazards associated with exercising
great power in the absence of grand strategy. An honest inventory of the strategic
environment concludes that aspects of the ongoing conflict in Iraq challenge the
nations three sources of strength fundamentally. Indeed, Iraq demonstrates quite
well the intrinsic connection between todays strategic choices, the continued
security of the aforemen-

12/13

tioned vulnerable
sources of strength, and tomorrows capacity to effectively defend American position,
interests, and influence.

With regard to the
first source of strengtha secure homelandthe United States must anticipate
that the intervention in Iraq will trigger some extremist blowback. Further, it would be
prudent to expect that one legacy of the war in Iraq might be a persistent challenge to
the American homeland hatched from within the resistance movements now concentrated
against the United States in the northern Arabian Gulf and Afghanistan. Given the
terrorists increasing capacity for unbounded violence, this more intense and
motivated irregular challenge may in fact threaten the United States with some fundamental
disruption or dislocation. Indeed, it is almost certain to threaten the same for a number
of key strategic partners around the world.

This does not imply
that increased extremist resistance will succeed. Nor does it imply that inaction in the
hope of avoiding some near-term increase in violence is acceptable. Rather, it recognizes
thatas in the case of the Afghan Arabs in the wake of the Soviet war in
Afghanistanthere will be some post-conflict terrorist reckoning that, while
free-riding on the uncontrollable forces of globalization, will challenge the interests of
the United States over time.29 It may be that this reckoning will include some
significant near-term increase in the virulence of the terrorist challenge. That this is
so should not necessarily inhibit strategic action; rather, it should be an important
consideration in the cost-benefit calculations that are so crucial to effective strategic
decisionmaking.

With regard to the
second source of strengtha strong and vibrant network of alliances and
partnershipsit is abundantly clear that the Iraq War has had some negative impact on
American relationships around the world. The extent to which the impact is permanent is
open to question. However, American decisionmakers should be mindful of two important
considerations that can, without some deliberate management, erode the reach and strength
of American influence over time. Both are essential considerations for grand strategy
development and long-term risk assessment. Each has been made more problematic by the type
of great-power activism the United States has demonstrated since the invasion of Iraq in
2003.

First, absent
compelling threats to their physical existence, some of the United States closest
partners are suddenly freer to pursue their own discrete national interests in ways that
are sometimes at odds with the most conventional conceptions of alliance discipline. This
implies that key partners of the United States are increasingly likely to weigh policy
options far more independently than they have in the past. They are likelier, as a result,
also to follow the political imperatives that are most associated with their own narrow
national interests when arriving at their most important strategic deci-

13/14

sions. This will
occur at the expense of some of the more abstract common interests they share with their
traditional allies or strategic partners. Second, close association with the United States
may become very costly in human, fiscal, material, political, and psychological terms to
those foreign partners upon whom the active maintenance of American position and influence
is most reliant for steadfast support. They too will become the targets of those prone to
actively resist American great power. Thus, American position and influence may become
increasingly vulnerable to the risk calculations of a handful of foreign political leaders
who are themselves vulnerable to voting populations and who are thus certain to pay some
price for their governments continued alignment with the United States.

Finally, with
respect to the third source of strengthan American population inured to the high
cost of primacyit is important to remember that great power, latent or otherwise,
will invariably engender some general resistance from the less powerful. This is less a
matter of theologygood versus evilthan it is one of natural or social
lawthe instincts of fight or flight, or the conflict between haves and have-nots. In
particular, an activist great power like the United States, no matter its motives, can
expect that even modest employment of its enormous capacity will provoke substantial
physical and political resistance from some quarters. Additionally, it is inevitable that
a continuing perception of American unilateralism among some will trigger active balancing
behavior as well. Friend and foe alike who perceive dangerous inequity in the global
distribution of power or who sense in the current distribution of power a more
fundamental, existential challenge will seek to effectively limit American influence
through recourse to active resistance and obstruction. Thus, the mere possession and
retention of dominant influence, as well as its active employment, will engender some
substantial cost. Americans and those who are decisive in shaping their beliefs need to
become accustomed to these costs. Without some recognition of them, the United States
hazards popular repudiation of international activism.

With regard to Iraq
specifically, there are real indications that the broad costs associated with American
great-power activism there are increasingly prohibitive to many Americans. Indeed, this
appears to be translating

14/15

into a more
generalized rejection of those activist foreign and security policies that might be
essential to the retention of dominant great power into the indefinite future.30 If
one accepts that the nations unique position of strength relies on continued
activism, then it is safe to assume that increased popular sentiment against activism
places that position in some significant jeopardy. Allowed to continue, this trend is
certain to affect the strategic decisionmaking of those vulnerable at the ballot box.
Collective self-doubt, excessive caution, and self-deterrence are natural by-products of a
popular rejection of activism. Thus, as a result, the active retention of the
nations position and influence may at some point become unsustainable.

It appears that when
the broad cost of any one aspect of activism greatly exceeds popular expectations, the
whole enterprise of American great power itself may be wounded. Among the three sources of
strength, a decisive loss of popular and, by implication, political will might be the most
dangerous and debilitating. If the population cannot be convinced of the very tangible
benefits of primary influenceif, for example, Americans see only the down-sides
associated with primacythen they cannot be expected to bear the burdens necessary to
secure the nations position of influence over time.

None of the above is
intended to imply that the risks associated with the Iraq War are excessive or that its
costs automatically inhibit the future defense of wider American interests. It is meant
only to argue that those risks and costs must be weighed within a grand strategic context.
What should be clear by now with respect to Iraq and grand strategy is that the war is not
occurring in a strategic vacuum. Rather, it is occurring within a broader and perhaps as
yet undefined strategic context where competing and arguably more enduring interests hang
in the balance. In short, there are risk considerations of some consequence that exist
above and adjacent to the immediate operational and theater strategic challenges in Iraq.
In this environment, one can see how the mounting costs of the war can place the future of
American primacy itself at some substantial risk.

ConclusionWhat
Is at Stake?

Describing a time
half a century ago, the authors of NSC 68 wrote, Conflict has, therefore, become
endemic and is waged . . . by violent or non-violent methods in accordance with the
dictates of expediency.31 The same language might be used today. If
the United States has entered a period of persistent irregular and catastrophic resistance
and frictiona period of endemic conflict not unlike that suggested by those words
from NSC-68 now is not the time to ignore the imperative for grand strategic
calculation. The United States cannot afford to satisfy the immediate demands of its
strategic present at the expense of its grand strategic future. It can no longer make
discrete policy

15/16

of enormous import
without some reference to a coherent grand design.32 In short order, the United
States needs to assess its relative position holistically, determine a consensus vision
for the future of American great power, and then chart the most effective ends-focused,
ways- and means-rationalized, and risk-informed route to secure that
position over time. This demands more than rhetorical strategy. In fact, it demands a new,
comprehensive vision for the sustained maintenance of American great power that
establishes priorities, places discrete circumstances like Iraq in their proper strategic
context, clinically recognizes that resistance and obstruction are natural aspects of a
very dangerous environment, and accounts for the real and accumulating costs of primacy in
a deliberate and rational way.

Though it will be
costly, most agree that the active maintenance of the nations dominant position is
essential, if for no other reason than to ensure continued US control over its own future.
In addition, many have argued that American hegemonyhumbly appliedwill benefit
more people worldwide than would a return to the chaos and uncontrolled competition of
multi-polarity.33 It is wise counsel to recall that much about the American
course once rested on decisions made in foreign capitals. Today, it is clear that American
strategy elites prefer exercising exclusive control over the nations strategic
future and those key aspects of the environment that will most affect the character of
that future. Yet it is not clear that the American population and their elites are
socialized in ways that will allow them to chart the most prudent and forward-looking path
to do so or to accept the costs and burdens associated with it.

In the end,
guaranteeing the nations position of primary influence ensuring decisive
retention of both the capacity and will to employ American great power
effectivelyrelies on conscious strategic choices born of deliberation and not
impulse. Thus, the war on terror cannot effectively constitute the sum total of the
nations grand strategy, as it constitutes a national response to just one of many
challenges to American primary influence.34 A more comprehensive
defense against the myriad sources of friction and resistance likely to accumulate over
time is required. Clearly, messianic terrorists and irresponsible mullahs undermine the
security of American position and interests at their foundation, but these challenges
exist alongside others that are or will be equally exigent now and in the future.

Today, states
compete with other states and entities economically as much if not more than they do in
the realm of security. Thus, maintaining the level of competitiveness essential to
continued economic dominance demands the same type of strategic calculation once devoted
exclusively to physical security. Additionally, the state and the state system are
increasingly vulnerable to the forces of unchecked globalization, while the increasing
strength of the simple and compelling idea, identity, ethnicity, and religion all

16/17

compete against
state identification as key principles of social organization. Combined, these erode the
foundations of already fragile political systems, fuel the pervasive under-governance so
endemic to a number of critical regions worldwide, and increase the likelihood that a
state of strategic significance will succumb to its own internal weakness and cause the
world some untold catastrophe. All present challenges to physical security, human
development, and the spread of effective representative governance. Finally, some
prospective great-power challengers and potentially hostile great-power ententes remain on
the horizon. But while these sources of competition are traditional in character, it is
now likelier that their preferred form of resistance will be surreptitious employment of
physical, political, and economic violence rather than direct military
confrontation. Without some detailed cross-government consideration, these actors could
compete with the United States for niche primacy at a future date.

This short list is
not exhaustive, but rather illustrative. It should, however, indicate the degree of
complexity confronting todays grand strategist. Embedded in this complexity is one
certainty: The nation simply cannot depend solely on intuition to determine what is and is
not important. Interest-based calculation must prevail. Thus, strategic choices need to be
made within some broader ends-focused strategic context and with some reference to a grand
destination for the nation and its people. Without this, the nations strength might
be consumed by increasingly costly efforts, focused on achieving the truly
unachievableabsolute securityat the expense of achieving what is both
attainable and minimally necessary to the sustained retention of American position and
influence. Indeed, American decisionmakers and the US population ought to become content
with managing (and not necessarily eliminating) active resistance, forcing it below the
threshold of strategic significance, while pursuing a grand strategy that focuses on
securing and extending the nations advantages in ways that will both underwrite
sustained retention of its strategic position and stable political, economic, and
security development worldwide.

Today, the greatest
risk to American position is not defeat at the hands of a peer competitor, but slow
voluntary retreat from international activism hastened by a cultural aversion to grand
strategic calculation and risk assess-

17/18

ment. Quite simply,
the end of American primacy may come via a persistent, unwelcome, and unanticipated
accumulation of strategic costs, as successive American executives exercise great power
without reference to grand design, and as average Americans, their most influential
opinion elites, and those states upon whom the United States relies for support grow
increasingly weary of the price associated with doing so. Absent a real ends-focused,
ways and means-rationalized, and risk-informed grand design, the
United States is vulnerable to slow surrender to strategic exhaustion and voluntary
retreat from that essential activism necessary to the security of its position
in perpetuity.

2. An earlier draft
of this article included the subtitle, Toward an Ends-Focused, Ways-
and Means-Rationalized, and Risk-Informed Grand Strategy. On this
point, see H. Richard Yarger, Towards a Theory of Strategy: Art Lykke and the Army
War College Strategy Model, http://dde.carlisle.army.mil/authors/stratpap. htm, pp.
6-8; and Christopher Layne, Rethinking American Grand Strategy: Hegemony or Balance
of Power in the 21st Century? World Policy Journal, 15 (Summer 1998). Yarger
argues, Ends are objectives, that if accomplished create, or contribute to, the
achievement of the desired end state (p. 6). He continues, Ways (strategic
concepts/courses of action) explain how the ends are to be accomplished by the
employment of resources (p. 6). Means, according to Yarger, are the specific
resources [that] are to be used in applying the concepts to accomplish the
objectives (p. 7). Finally, Yarger observes, Risk explains the gap between
what is to be achieved and the concepts and resources available to achieve the
objectives (p. 7). Layne defines grand strategy as the process by which the
state matches ends and means in the pursuit of security (p. 8).

With regard to the
first sentence of this article, see, for example, William Ascher and William H. Overholt, Strategic
Planning and Forecasting: Political Risk and Economic Opportunity (New York: John
Wiley and Sons, 1983), p. 32. Ascher and Overholt observe, Enumeration of a
straightforward core strategy entails a great virtue. . . . The virtue is that its
enunciators, their subordinates, the relevant public, and adversaries will all possess a
clear guideline to which they can adjust their behavior. Ascher and Overholt
continue, However well contrived individual policies may be, frequent contradictions
among policies in different areas and lack of a generally accepted concept of the
nations overall strategy enhance bureaucratic warfare, fragment political support,
erode overall credibility, and elicit accusations of inconsistency or even bad faith from
allies and adversaries alike.

3. For a thorough
discussion of early Cold War strategic net assessment and planning efforts, see Robert R.
Bowie and Richard H. Immerman, Waging Peace: How Eisenhower Shaped an Enduring Cold War
Strategy (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1998); and Michael J Hogan, A Cross of
Iron: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of the National Security State (Cambridge, Eng.:
Cambridge Univ. Press, 2000).

4. For pre- and
post-9/11 perspectives in this regard, see The Commission on Americas National
Interests, Americas National Interests: A Report from the Commission on
Americas National Interests, 2000, The Nixon Center,
http://www.nixoncenter.org/publications/monographs/nationalinterests.htm; US Commission on
National Security/21st Century (USCNS/21), Seeking a National Strategy: A Concert for
Preserving Security and Promoting Freedom, April 2000,
http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/nssg/phaseII.pdf; Clark A. Murdock and Michèle
Flournoy et al., Beyond Goldwater Nichols: U.S. Government and Defense Reform for a New
Strategic Era, Phase 2 Report, July 2005,
http://www.csis.org/media/csis/pubs/bgn_ph2_report.pdf; and Lawrence J. Korb and Robert O.
Boorstin et al., Integrated Power: A National Security Strategy for the 21st Century
(Washington: Center for American Progress, 2006). Before 9/11, both The Commission on
Americas National Interest and USCNS/21 arrived at similar conclusions. In its
report, The Commission on Americas National Interests observed, Lacking basic
coordinates and a clear sense of priorities, American foreign policy becomes reactive and
impulsive in a fast changing world. Likewise, a prescient USCNS/21 observed in its
report, Seeking a National Strategy, No concern of American society is more
in need of creative thinking than the future security of this country, but in no domain is
such thinking more resistant to change. . . . The time for reexamination is now, before
the American people find themselves shocked by events they never anticipated.
Post-9/11, Murdock and Flournoy et al., in the CSIS Beyond Goldwater Nichols Phase II
report (p. 26), observed similarly, The structures and mechanisms the United States
uses to develop and implement national security policy remain largely unchanged. Cabinet
agencies continue to be the principal organizational element of national security policy,
and

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each agency has its
own strategies, capabilities, budget, culture, and institutional prerogatives to emphasize
and protect. . . . [T]he mechanisms to integrate the various dimensions of U.S. national
security policy and to translate that policy into integrated programs and actions are
extremely weak, if they exist at all.

5. For detailed
discussions of both the systemic gaps in the nations strategic planning capacity and
some recommended changes in structure and policy to contend with them, see both Murdock
and Flournoy et al., pp. 26-42; and Michèle A. Flournoy and Shawn W. Brimley,
Strategic Planning for National Security: A New Project Solarium, Joint
Force Quarterly, No. 41 (Second Quarter, 2006), pp. 80-86.

6. On this point,
current President of the Council on Foreign Relations and former Bush State Department
Director for Policy Planning, Richard N. Haass, is particularly instructive. See Richard
N. Haass, Is There a Doctrine in the House? The New York Times, 8
November 2005 available at
http://www.cfr.org./publication/9168/is_there_a_doctrine_in_the_house.html. Haass
observes, What should U.S. policy be toward a rising China? Or toward an emerging
India, a newly assertive Japan, a drifting Europe, or a less democratic and possibly
declining Russia? What should be done to thwart the nuclear ambitions of North Korea,
Iran, or anyone else? To reduce terrorism? To promote trade? To increase freedom? . . .
These are all tough questions, but what makes them tougher is that the United States is
trying to answer them without an intellectual framework.

7. On this point,
Flournoy and Brimley agree. See Flournoy and Brimley, p. 81, and Murdock and Flournoy et
al., p. 27. Flournoy and Brimley observe, The reality is that Americas most
fundamental deliberations are made in an environment that remains dominated by the needs
of the present and the cacophony of current crises. Similarly, Murdock and
Flournoy et al. argue that this near-term focus brings some substantial risks.

8. For pre- and
post-9/11 perspectives on this, see Lawrence Freedman, Grand Strategy in the
Twenty-First Century, Defense Studies, 1 (Spring 2001), 11; and Korb and
Boorstin et al., p. 3. This article assumes both that the United States will encounter
direct, purposeful resistance from state and non-state competitors but will at the same
time encounter indirect resistance or friction from competing forces of globalization,
integration and interdependence, disintegration, and fragmentation worldwide. Before 9/11,
Lawrence Freedman observed, The logic of globalisation undermines state
boundaries and encourages linkages that transcend and bypass them. Thus any grand strategy
for a status quo state in the twenty-first century may not so much be about protecting its
international position vis-à-vis other more radical states, but vis-à-vis these more
fundamental shifts in the system that contest the very idea of the state. After
9/11, Korb and Boorstin et al. observed, Today the greatest danger to the American
people is not a single great power or group of rising powers. Instead, the greatest
threats are the forces of fragmentation.

9. For a pre-9-11
perspective, see The Commission on Americas National Interests, Report, and
USCNS/21, Seeking a National Strategy. For post-9/11 perspective, see Murdock and
Flournoy et al., and Korb and Boorstin et al.

10. On this, Henry
Kissinger observed, At the apogee of its power, the United States finds itself in an
ironic position. In the face of the most profound and widespread upheavals the world has
ever seen, it has failed to develop concepts relevant to the emerging realities. See
Henry Kissinger, Does America Need a Foreign Policy? Toward a Diplomacy for the 21st
Century (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001), p. 19.

11. Korb and
Boorstin et al.

12. Flournoy and
Brimley are particularly pointed in their criticism in this regard in the post-9/11
period. See Flournoy and Brimley, p. 80. They observe, More than four years after
September 11th, 2001, there is no established interagency process for assessing the full
spectrum of threats and opportunities endemic to the new security environment and
identifying priorities for policy development and resource allocation.

13. Flournoy and
Brimley argue similarly, Given that the United States has embarked on what is surely
another long twilight struggle, it is past time to make a serious and sustained effort at
integrating all the elements of national power in a manner that creates the unity of
effort necessary for victory. See Flournoy and Brimley, p. 81.

14. See Charles A.
Kupchan, Life After Pax Americana, World Policy Journal, 16 (Fall
1999); and Korb and Boorstin et al., p. ii. On the strategic environment in the 1990s,
Kupchan observes, This decade has been a relatively easy one for American
strategists. Americas preponderant economic and military might has produced a
unipolar international structure, which has in turn provided a ready foundation for global
stability. . . . Americas uncontested hegemony has spared [the Bush 41 and Clinton
administrations] the task of preserving peace and managing competition and balancing among
multiple poles of power. Recently, Korb and Boorstin et al. argued more pointedly
that the current leadership has been stubbornly consistent in its certainty that the
omnipotent power of the United States will triumph no matter the challenge.

15. On this,
Freedman concludes similarly, The evaporation of anxieties about a superpower war
eased the strategic imperatives that led major powers to keep a close eye on international
affairs. It may be for the best that they are no longer obsessed by a search for Soviet
mischief-making and communist subversion, but the down side may be the conclusion that
there is no need to pay much attention to anything. See Freedman, p. 15.

16. Perhaps most
telling in this regard is the penchant within the American government to channel strategic
thought into regional and functional subdivisions. The organization of the executive
departments is instruc-

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tive. The regional
bureaus of the Department of State exercise primacy over institutions like the Office of
Policy Planning that, if organized correctly, may in fact be better positioned to attack
discrete grand strategic challenges from a global perspective, informed by the vast army
of regional and functional specialists. Similarly, within the Department of Defense, grand
undertakings like wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are the exclusive purview of regionalists,
reporting directly to principals. Those at the working level of global strategy and risk
assessment are not consulted. Thus the burden of complex global cost-benefit calculations
are left to the senior executive, informed only by the narrow interests of the regional
specialists and their skilled advocates.

17. With respect to
the current Administration in this regard, Flournoy and Brimley observe, While the
George W. Bush Administrations 2002 National Security Strategy . . . did articulate
a set of national goals and objectives, it was not the product of serious strategic
planning. . . . Describing a destination is no substitute for developing a comprehensive
roadmap for how the country will achieve its stated goals. See Flournoy and Brimley,
p. 80.

18. Dean Acheson and
George C. Marshall, A Report to the President Pursuant to the Presidents
Directive of January 31st, 1950, in Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS)
1950, Volume I, National Security Affairs; Foreign Economic Policy, ed. Everett S.
Gleason and Frederick Aadahl (Washington: GPO, 1977), p. 264.

19. This should be
taken to imply the physical, economic, social, and political security of the United
States. For a foundational Cold War perspective on this, see Acheson and Marshall, p. 238.
The concept is outlined best in Section II (Fundamental Purpose of the United
States) of NSC 68. The report by the Secretaries of State and Defense observe,
The fundamental purpose [of the United States] is to assure the integrity and
vitality of our free society. . . . Three realities emerge as a consequence of this
purpose: Our determination to maintain the essential elements of individual freedom . . .
to create conditions under which our free and democratic system can live and prosper; and
. . . to fight if necessary to defend our way of life.

20. Francis Fukuyama
and G. John Ikenberry, Report of the Working Group on Grand Strategic Choices.
The Princeton Project on National Security, p. 13
http://www.wws.princeton.edu/ppns/conferences/reports/fall/GSC.pdf, are particularly
instructive on this point. They observe, The U.S. has an interest in having American
leadership accepted and supported by other free nations. . . . Consensual hegemony should
not be taken for granted.

21. See Kupchan;
Dean Acheson, Memorandum of Conversation, by the Secretary of State, in
Gleason and Aadahl, p. 207; and Directing Panel of Project Solarium, Project
Solarium, in Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) 1952-1954, Volume II,
National Security Affairs, ed. William Z. Slaney, Lisle A. Rose, and Neal H. Petersen
(Washington: GPO, 1984), p. 363. Before 9/11, Kupchan remarked on this topic,
Todays unipolar landscape is a function not just of Americas
preponderant resources but also its willingness to use them to underwrite international
order. Accordingly, should the will of the body politic to bear the costs and risks of
international leadership decline, so too would Americas position of global
primacy. There is also historical precedent for routinized consideration of the cost
and risk of great power and its impact on the population. Dean Acheson, for example, told
Representative Christian Herter, The American people must be made to recognize the
gravity of our situation and must become reconciled to the fact that we must make certain
sacrifices in order to meet the problem of Soviet aggression; that we can only meet it
with the full support of the American people, which cannot be marshaled without a thorough
understanding on their part. Further, during the Eisenhower Administration, the
Project Solarium task forces were instructed specifically to address, To what extent
would proposed policy and lines of action be supported by the U.S. public and by the
Congress, assuming vigorous leadership on the part of principal leaders of the
government?

22. Two years ahead
of 9/11, the US Commission on National Security warned in their report A New World
Coming: American Security in the 21st Century, A world amenable to our interests
and values will not come into being by itself. Much of the world will resent and oppose
us, if not for the simple fact of our preeminence, then for the fact that others often
perceive the United States as exercising its power with arrogance and self-absorption. As
a result, for many years to come Americans will become increasingly less secure than they
now believe themselves to be. See USCNS/21, Seeking a National Strategy, p.
8.

23. On this note,
the 2005 National Defense Strategy acknowledges that our leading position in
world affairs will continue to breed unease, a degree of resentment, and resistance.
See Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), The National Defense Strategy
(Washington: DOD, March 2005), http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Mar2005/d20050318nds1.pdf.

24. These ideas were
foundational in the development of the 2005 National Defense Strategy; for more
complete descriptions of irregular and catastrophic challenges, see pp. 2-4.

25. See Haas;
Kissinger, p. 31; and James Kurth, Americas Grand Strategy: A Pattern of
History, The National Interest, No. 43 (Spring 1996), p. 14. In discussing
democratization, Haas argues national interest trumps all other compelling but
less-important concerns. He observes, Too many threats in which the lives of
millions hang in the balance . . . will not be solved by the emergence of democracy.
Promoting democracy is and should be one US foreign policy goal, but when it comes to
relations with Russia or China, or Saudi Arabia and Egypt, other national security
interests must normally take precedence (or at least co-exist with) concerns about

20/21

how people and
leaders elsewhere govern themselves. Likewise, Kissinger observes, Certainly
to be truly American, any concept of national interest must flow from the countrys
democratic tradition and concern with the vitality of democracy around the world. But the
survival of the United States must also translate its values into answers to some hard
questions: What, for our survival, must we seek to prevent no matter how painful the
means? What, to be true to ourselves, must we try to accomplish no matter how small the
attainable international consensus, and if necessary, entirely on our own? What wrongs is
it essential we right? What goals are simply beyond our capacity? Kurth too argues,
Any effective national strategy must be grounded in the long-term, concrete
interests of organized groups. This is necessary to sustain the strategy through the ebbs
and flows, the fads and fashions, of media attention in foreign affairs.

26. Fukuyama and
Ikenberry (p. 9) agree. They observe, A solid understanding of the interests of the
United States is required in order to enable us to recognize the scale and parameters of
the dangers likely to emerge in the coming decades and to deal with them in such a way
that advances rather than erodes American interests.

27. See Kissinger,
p. 17; and Robert Kagan, U.S. Dominance: Is It Good for the World?: The Benevolent
Empire, Foreign Policy, No. 111 (Summer 1998), p. 31. Kissinger agrees and
argues: At the dawn of the new millennium, the United States is enjoying a
preeminence unrivaled by even the greatest empires of the past. . . . During the last
decade of the twentieth century, Americas preponderant position rendered it an
indispensable component of international stability. Further, Kagan observes,
For all the bleating about hegemony, no nation really wants genuine multi-polarity.
No nation has shown a willingness to take on equal responsibilities for managing global
crises. No nation has been willing to make the same short-term sacrifices that the United
States has been willing to make in the long-term interest of preserving the global
order.

28. US Department of
Defense, On Iraq: Testimony as Delivered by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul
Wolfowitz, and Director, Office of Management and Budget, Joshua Bolten, and Acting Chief
of Staff, U.S. Army, General John Keane, Tuesday, July 29, 2003,
http://www.dod.mil/speeches/2003/sp20030729depsecdef0385.html.

29. Just after 9/11,
Fouad Ajami described the phenomenon of the Afghan Arabs this way:
Todays warriors have been cut loose from the traditional world. Some of the
leadersthe Afghan Arabshad become restless after the Afghan War. They were
insurrectionists caught in no-mans land, on the run from their homelands but never
at home in the West. . . . The counterinsurgencies [in their native lands] had been
effective, so the extremists turned up in the West. There, liberal norms gave them
shelter, and these men would rise to fight another day. It would be wise counsel to
understand the character of the blowback Ajami describes here, in the context of the
current and future strategic environment. See Fouad Ajami, The Uneasy
Imperium, in How Did This Happen? Terrorism and the New War, ed. James F.
Hoge, Jr., and Gideon Rose (New York: Public Affairs, 2001), p. 17.

30. See the Pew
Research Center for the People and the Press, Opinion Leaders Turn Cautious, Public
Looks Homeward, 17 November 2005,
http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=263. According to polling data, the
report indicates, The publics overall support for global engagementwhich
increased in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attackshas clearly receded. Just a
quarter of the public favors the U.S. being the most active of leading nations, which
represents a significant decline compared with October 2001 (33%). The percentage of
Americans who agree that the U.S. should mind its own business internationally
has risen from 30% in 2002 to 42% currently. With respect to Iraq specifically and
its effect on popular attitudes, the study concludes, The war in Iraq has had a
profound impact on the way opinion leaders, as well as the public, view Americas
global role.

31. The National
Security Council, A Report to the President Pursuant to the Presidents
Directive of January 31, 1950, in Gleason and Aadahl, p. 235.

32. Here Haass is
instructive. He observes, That a guiding principle is needed cannot be doubted. A
doctrine furnishes policymakers with a compass to define strategies and determine
priorities, which in turn helps shape decisions affecting long-term investments involving
military forces assistance programs, and both intelligence and diplomatic assets. A
doctrine also helps prepare the public for what commitments and sacrifices may be
requiredand sends signals to other governments, groups, and individuals . . . about
what this government seeks or is striving to prevent.

33. On this point,
Fukuyama and Ikenberry are instructive. On pp. 11-12 they observe, American primacy
is a necessary condition for an international order that produces great-power peace and
prosperity. No other state has the necessary strength, values and geographical position
necessary to underwrite such an order. . . . The true logic behind primacy is
not a simple desire to be number one or nationalist egotism but stems from recognition
that in an anarchical world some states or groups of states will exercise power. Our
experience has taught us that it is best that this power is exercised by liberal
democracies; the alternative is great-power security competition between the United States
and her allies on the one hand and an autocracy or combination of autocracies on the
other.

34. Haass agrees. He
argues, Attempts to ascribe a Bush Doctrine to George W. Bushs
presidency come up short. There is less a coherent policy than a mix of counter-terrorism,
preemption, unilateralism, and democracy promotion.

Lieutenant Colonel Nathan Freier
is Director of National Security Affairs at the US Army War Colleges Strategic
Studies Institute (SSI). Prior to joining SSI, he served in the Office of the Secretary of
Defense, where his principal responsibilities included development of the National
Defense Strategy. Previously, he was a visiting scholar at the University of
Marylands Center for International and Security Studies and a strategist with the
Strategic Plans and Policy Directorate, Department of the Army Staff, in Washington, D.C.
From January to July 2005, Lieutenant Colonel Freier served as a strategist with
Headquarters, Multi-National ForceIraq. He is a graduate of the US Army Command and
General Staff College and holds masters degrees in international relations and
politics from Troy State University and the Catholic University of America.